Damn. 1234
Will blizz be brave enough to ditch soulbinds and conduitsā¦ this system looks needless and boring. Stick with craftable legos.
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i just cant get behind this game anymoreā¦ Been here since day 1 and this happens at the start of every expansion that Ion has been in control ofā¦ It wont be fun till the last 4 months of the expansion when there is catch up put in place and when there sub numbers are so low they fix there messā¦
So many things can be done to make this game feel so much better, get rid of this bs needing to be in certain places to swap out talents and what not. You go on about not wanting to forces players into having to do this before every boss fight so you make it harder for them to do so instead of making it easier there is no logic in your way of thinking ION!
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Does it have to look like BOZO?
You have great insight.
Weekly lock out of soul binds will truly reveal many of the flaws of the system bloat in systemlands. 
You lost me at MoP was a high rated expansionā¦this entire convo seems like its just a vamped version of the same olā stuff people have grown to dislike from Blizzard.
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So they are basically artifact relics?
A month later and these still are still looking like another lame duck idea
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Really not a fan of the soul binds. It was hyped all this last year about picking the covenant you liked most and it seems like their soul binds definitely cater to specific roles more so than others. IE. I like the Night Fae but DPS wise with the soul bind perks from what Iām seeing now, the Venthyr or Necrolords have better options. Iād say just mix up some stuff a bit so every covenant has something for everyone -Because as of right now instead of choosing which covenant Iād like to play Iām going to choose the one that benefits me moreso -
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Do the right thing and delete them.
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Systemlands is DOA when it launches very soon. But that is okay because another BFA and the rental systems will go away along with all these bad ideas IMVHO!
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totally agree, Iām a senior and when it comes to pve I canāt remember all the doās and donāts and consequently am not the most popular in raids , dungeons. At least on pvp you can play your role and hope for the best. Far to much weight put on PVE accompishments , rewards etc/
Soul Bind and conduits that increase X amount of versa is probably the most boring thing ever in a long, long time.
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So did I get my Vincent Valentine vampire soulbind and roster of cool men for each covenant? No? Well hmm not really looking forward to this then.
Did guys get their Morrigan vampire soulbind and roster of interesting females? No? Well I doubt they will really care who they pick as well for the sake of interest factor.
Maybe some really neat whimsical or devious type of NPCs that could appeal to both audiences? No? Whatās the whole purpose of this soulbind againā¦?
Oh silly me, thatās right. The āborrowed powerā talent tree.
Did they address these Soulbinds should not be linked up with any type of ability set? No? So it really is about another worthless grind. Instead of an RPG feel. Which they keep claiming this expansion has heavily influenced for whatever reason.
āChoices matter.ā You mean the skills and abilities I unlock right? Cause you damn straight. If players donāt want to get alienated.
Not which covenant I want to join, get their mogs, mounts, story etc. Also this whole soulbind business which really wasnāt about making interesting characters to begin with and made the most generic husks to shell out for another grind.
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Iām looking forward to playing with this stuff when SL goes live! 
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Ready to make Emeni my soul best friend.
they brought us proc sets from esoā¦ >.<
After reading this feedback, how is it not clear that something needs to change?
The only comments with 5+ likes are negative toward Soulbinds - some even reference borrowed power negatively along with it. There have been multiple YouTube videos by Bellular, Preach, and Asmongold (highlights from Twitch mostly) about being concerned with this system as a whole if it includes player power for multiple reasons I will highlight below. These dev decisions just flat out donāt make sense from a player perspective.
Before I start, Iād like to invite you all to watch Preachās video titled Shadowlands Is Close - Last Chat On Covenants https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfnzbdwtDgU - it covers most of what I will say here and is incredibly well thought out and put together. Itās apparent that Preach cares a lot about the community and the direction of the game. With that, letās begin with just a few of the criticisms there are with Covenants in Shadowlands.
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Inability to easily swap Covenants
As much as I hate to beat a dead horse here, as I feel like much of this has been said already, here we are. Covenants not being easily swapped is terrible for two major reasons.
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The first and most egregious being that they cannot be balanced with player power. There will always be meta picks and the longer that devs decides that meta is bad and denies the fact that itās not 2004 anymore and players will always want the better choice, no matter how minor the difference, the worse off this game will become. This doesnāt only exist in World of Warcraft - it exists in all games. Thatās just the way things have developed with the natural progression of the internet and its ease of connectivity. Ion, in the Preach interview, stating that he doesnāt think people will require certain Covenants on LFG postings is actually insane. Thatās exactly what will happen unless the player power aspect within Soulbinds and Conduits is removed. It cannot be controlled. What happened to take the player, not the class? Isnāt this the same thing, but with Covenants? Devs, please avoid being a slave to the sunk cost fallacy.
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The existence of the new weekly chest mechanic and the philosophy behind the change. Itās fantastic - exactly what we needed! But thereās a catch. How are we supposed to do Raids, Mythic+, Torghast, and PvP optimally (as people WILL want to do) without being able to swap these things as we wish? The willingness for players to do multiple core aspects of the game for greater reward is finally starting to be addressed correctly, and yet the Covenant system diminishes the ability and motivation to participate in more than one of them. My friends and I joked about having to create multiple characters of the same class just to be able to do the content that we want to do, but I realized at some point, it may not actually be all jokes. This may actually be a reality if changes arenāt made, and fast. Imagine a World of Warcraft in which you were actually able to make situational choices for your character to perform better when you wanted to?? Thatās the kind of WoW I, and I suspect most people, want to play.
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It doesnāt make sense in the context of the Shadowlands
As we progress through the initial Shadowlands storyline during the leveling phase, we assist each separate Covenant faction with the impending war. We are heralded as the āMaw Walkerā and naturally, each faction is drawn to us for that reason. Why, then, should we only be allowed to pick one to progress with and never any other without severe consequence? Preach put out a parody video of this on Twitter and it explains everything pretty humorously. Hereās the unlisted YouTube link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfg5nwrEMkg&feature=emb_titleEnjoy.
Iām all for making choices relevant and impactful, but doing it just for the sake of it without proper context just screams poor design. -
Interesting choices donāt have to be tied to player power. In the current form of Covenants, no matter how much Ion wants it to be, the Covenant choice is not comparable to the core MMORPG aspect of choosing your class. However, the potential for it to be close is possible with the removal of the aspects that make the choice feel bad to players. For many players, myself included, just choosing the theme of each Covenant and the transmogrification, mounts, and zones that go along with them is enough to satisfy our need for impactful decision making. It directly affects the identity of our characters and by extension reflects our own identities. There are two types of players in Shadowlands: the type that will choose their favorite Covenant no matter what, despite the performance cost, and the players that will choose the most powerful Covenant, despite the potential of not identifying with the Covenant at all and thereby diminishing the enjoyment of the system. I am grudgingly of the former and I agonize over the thought that it doesnāt have to be this way because I know in the back of my mind that it has a large potential to be the reason why I quit the game if things stay the way they are.
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If player power remains in Soulbinds and Conduits despite all the feedback, why is there a once per week lockout on changing Conduits? This feels arbitrary. A limit for the sake of a limit. What exactly is are devs concerned with here? If anyone has an answer to this, please share. It feels like they are just trying to create a fake impact on player choice where it doesnāt belong and that feels terrible. Players fundamentally need/want the ability to alter our characters to fit the content we are participating in.
So, what are some potential solutions to these issues?
Disclaimer: I am not a developer and I do not claim to be. The following ideas are mostly my personal opinion along with suggestions Iāve seen from the community.
Addressing #1-3:
Simply put, remove player power from Soulbinds and Conduits and allow swapping between Covenants. Covenant class and signature abilities are fine, but we need to be able to swap between these things without severe consequences in order to do multiple types of core content in the game. Soulbinds can easily be converted into only fun/useful things that already exist within some of them, such as the Night Fae Soulbind trait Vorkai Sharpening Techniques https://shadowlands.wowhead.com/spell=325486/vorkai-sharpening-techniques or the Necrolord Soulbind trait Kevinās Keyring https://shadowlands.wowhead.com/spell=323079/kevins-keyring - This gives impact to player choices and doesnāt directly alter player power, thereby satisfying the needs of both devs and players. They can also alter the signature abilities in some way, as some do already. For example, with the Venthyr signature ability Leisurely Gait https://shadowlands.wowhead.com/spell=336147/leisurely-gait (Although, another form of this would be more appealing to me personally and more useful in PvP if it was instant as opposed to granting 2 charges, while still increasing cooldown). What do we do about conduits then? Make them affect the Covenant class abilities in various ways as opposed to the base class and spec abilities. That way they can still be drops from current content and still be interesting to players, though the number of Conduits will likely have to decrease to accommodate this change. I understand these are massive changes and would require a lot of work and thought, but it will be well worth the cost to provide players with the type of experience they deserve and the success of the expansion thereafter.
Addressing #4
Remove the arbitrary 1-week limitation. If there is some internal reason why the limitation exists, please share that with us. Be transparent and we may understand, and if we donāt agree with the reasoning, we can offer feedback to try and get it to a place where it makes sense. The āmitigationā of being able to swap Soulbinds in the same places you can swap talents is not acceptable as a way to trick players into thinking there is flexibility in the system. That is purely limitation disguised as flexibility and should not move forward in the design of the system.
What can we take away from this discussion?
We need more information on why these decisions are being made. Iām not even sure what the design principles the dev team is using at this point as it has not been made very clear. Iām all for the iteration of design philosophy over time, but to the player base, it seems like these things are getting worse, not better, and trust has been lost. Folks are worried - and rightfully so. Posts and comments on Twitter from prominent players in both the PvE and PvP scenes echo sentiments of both worry and frustration. Players with hundreds, even thousands of days of /played time are leaving the game theyāve been so dedicated to for years - a decade and change in some cases. Many come back from time to time, desperately trying to enjoy the game they once played insatiably, to be even further disappointed in the state of the game than when they left. This cannot be allowed to continue. The only thing that can kill WoW is itself. And weāre heading in that direction if nothing changes.
To the end, Iād like to say that criticism is healthy. There is a stigma surrounding criticism that we cannot love something we criticize. I wholeheartedly believe this to be untrue. We criticize what we love because we want it to be better. Thereās no shame in that.
3 Likes
i posted incorrectly
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I would also at the very least like the 1 week restriction on changing soulbinds to be removed. Iām coming from the mentality right now that I ONLY want to play druid. It was my baby when I started playing years ago and Iām just not feeling alts currently. Months ago I decided that in Shadowlands I was only going to play my druid, at least for a very long time if not the whole expac because my time is less available, but despite that I want to get to endgame and have all the gear and power I can for tanking, healing, and dpsing.
The especially painful catch for me is that i love both feral and balance. With the limit of 3 conduits to swap between, and only being able to change the soulbinds once a week, if I want to play all 4 of my specs in a single week I will have to change a soulbind and lock myself out of the soulbinds for whatever spec I switched off of.
All I want to do is play all the specs for my one character, but even that doesnāt seem viable, and this is with me already resigning myself to playing my character with sub-optimal soulbinds, since the likely-hood of the best soulbind tree for being a tank, a healer, and two dps characters are all going to be different ones is effectively zero. Even if I only played 3 specs the overlap would be incredibly painful and I really think that restriction should not be put on players.
I just want to play all the specs of my druid and not feel gimped by having bad soulbinds, which seems impossible currently, and I want to actually be able to play any of my 4 specs whenever I want, with at least ANY soulbinds, which also currently is impossible.
2 Likes